In present day poultry processing plants fowl are slaughtered and defeathered in one room of the plant and are eviscerated in another. Evisceration lines basically consist of a transport mechanism such as an overhead shackle conveyor from which the defeathered carcasses are suspended. The carcasses are thus transported to work stations where various operations are performed in sequence. Normally, the first operation is the opening cut and/or vent removal whereby the interior of the body is rendered accessible. The opened carcass is then transported to the viscera pulling station where the viscera are pulled out of the body cavity. Usually, the viscera are not actually removed but are left dangling from the carcass. Downstream of the viscera pulling station is an inspection station where the carcass and viscera are inspected for wholesomeness. If ova have been collected and a fowl is condemned, the ova from that fowl must be discarded with the fowl. Ova are not attached to the viscera, they are part of the separate reproductive system, and if they rupture inside they do not contaminate the carcass. Viscera comprise intestines, stomach, liver, heart, lungs, and other organs. If viscera rupture inside the carcass everything must be condemned, and if ova come in contact with ruptured viscera, they too must be condemned. It is preferable, therefore, to remove the ova before the viscera are pulled and to make certain that the ova will not be in the vicinity of the carcass when the viscera are pulled.
Presently, two systems are used in the poultry industry for harvesting ova, one prior to inspection and one subsequent to inspection. The latter is quite messy and results in substantial loss of product, and for these reasons, is used in only a few plants. However, the present "before inspection" method, while preferred over the post inspection method, also suffers a number of disadvantages. Basically, the present before inspection method uses a small ova cup which is attached to the evisceration shackle, the cup being attached by a single metal ring well above the operator. With this arrangement, the cup tends to swing back and forth, making it very difficult for an operator to lift and place into the cup a handful of the slippery ova. Twenty or more percent of the ova can be lost during this process. Further, these cups must travel the entire distance that the evisceration line travels, and since this approach does not provide a good system for cleaning the cups, additional problems are created by the fact that the travel time period of the cups is such that the yolk from a ruptured ovum tends to dry on the cup, thereby producing a difficult cleaning problem.